Perpetual Motion
by Nuclear Snake
Summary: - ensemble - The end was never supposed to last like this. Zombie!AU
1. Weapons Of Choice

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Part one of God knows how many. Zombie!AU. Ongoing.

* * *

Sakura has a gun, Naruto has a knife, and Sasuke has a thick bough, broken off a tree and smoothed with use.

There's a sick pleasure in the crunch of connection, something about wielding death in his hands. The way they topple back, stagger, moan and stumble and trip over each other. Sasuke batters them back, again and again, the staff an extension of his arms. It's only a precaution, really. What Sasuke wants to do is tear them senseless with bare hands.

He screams, sometimes. Never remembers it, but Sakura recounts the day every twilight, when they're huddled together for warmth. She always looks at him with hollow understanding, and whispers to him what he said. Things about mothers and fathers and brothers and blood. Mostly blood.

Sasuke's life used to be white-washed and pretty, but now it's difficult to find anything that isn't stained with blood.

Sakura has a gun, Sasuke has a stick, and Naruto has a knife given to him but a man who could almost be his brother.

He's always been a brawler, and the way the knife slides in has always appealed to his rougher instincts. It's small and slick, the handle worn from more use than it was meant for, but it's held up well. He uses it to slice throats and gouge eyes, trusting his traveling companions to do the rest.

Naruto brushes up against death like an old friend, greets it with a crazy grin and a knife in the back. Sakura worries, he knows, and Sasuke scrutinizes him like he can't quite understand, but Naruto keeps going. The knife brings him right up to the edge and just short of over, and there's nothing left for them to loose, anyways.

Naruto dances in the arms of death and feels more alive than ever before.

Sasuke has a stick, Naruto has a knife, and Sakura has a gun she took off the body of her teacher.

It never felt like defamation. The gun was to be put to a use, a weapon to fit the war. Sakura swore, in a building of white tile and brilliant sun, to never harm. Her hands were meant for healing, but on days like this, Sakura smashes the Hippocratic Oath to pieces, fragments she can wrap around herself in the night. She can justify it by reciting under her breath, pulses and blood flow and breath, but it still stings like salt in a wound every time she pulls the trigger.

There's a certain poetry to this. Like follows like, and the hot metal burns the virus away, and Sakura tells herself she's clean. Like her hands aren't still spattered in blood every night, like it even matters when they're soaked to the bone anyways.

All it takes is a flex of muscle, and the landscape lays itself to waste before her.


	2. Baser Instincts

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

This made me sad to write. :(

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Hinata shouldn't be this protected. All her life, she's been trying to find a way _out_ of this, trying to stand on her own two feet, however shaky. This time, however, she walked back into the cage, closed the door, and now she's just patiently waiting for somebody to lock her back in.

She stands there shaking, fingers twisted into Akamaru's thick fur. He holds still in front of her, still and gentle. Both of them have their eyes locked on the door; waiting for something. Hinata fancies herself knowing that Akamaru's as in the dark as she is. They've felt the tremble all day, each shake as a bullet tears into the earth, as a body collides with it.

"_Stay here boy, guard Hinata-chan." Kiba kissed her forehead, rested his hand on her shoulder, and backed away to the door. Shino stood a moment longer; smoothed her hair back from her face, traced her ear with a thumb; then he too was gone, leaving Hinata pressed into Akamaru's side, skin crawling. Her arm throbs steadily._

_Her eyes didn't want to look anywhere but at the bandages wrapped around her wrist._

It comes slowly, and all five senses register it with ease. First the hearing; it muffles, fades, returns full force. Hinata clamps her hands over her ears, whines softly as she feels blood drip, sluggishly, into her palms.

Then the taste. She coughs bile, hacks and spews the contents of her stomach, and then dry heaves. It feels like it lasts for hours, and even Akamaru's delicate licks to her cheek are only a slight source of cool comfort.

Taste is followed by touch, as her forehead burns and throbs. She can still feel Akamaru's fur wadded in her grasp, it just doesn't register like it used to – there's nothing there, no comfort or kindness. The clinical tile underneath her is just as blank, even if she knows logically that it should be harder, colder.

_Hurts. Everything hurts, every hair, but the focal point is her arm. It burns like someone pressed it to a hot stove, then freezes so badly she marvels at how it isn't made of ice. Kiba and Shino won't touch her arm, but they're touching her everywhere else, worried hands on her face and shoulders and gripping her around the waist. _

_Kiba pulls her legs in and wraps her up small, and Hinata feels like a child again, unborn, not yet ready to come out into the world._

Smell follows close on the heels of taste, as the acrid stench of flesh that's trailed them since the beginning flows away. This one is almost pleasant, would be almost nice, were it not for the crippling knowledge of what it heralds. Hinata closes her eyes and tries to breath.

The last to go is sight. Her eyelids drop, she moans and tumbles to the floor. Everything begins to shake; or is it just her?

Hinata drops, stone cold, as the virus works its way through her veins.

_School is called off three days after the infection sets in. By then a fifth of the local population are infected, and the city is closed off a day later. Hinata huddles in a basement with her sister until Kiba and Shino find them; then they run, sticking to the outskirts, sleeping close together, trying to find a way out._

_It's no use, and Hanabi starts to show signs of infection within two weeks. They have to leave her behind. Hinata doesn't protest, just wonders if she'll have any family left when this is all over. Neji, she thinks, must surely have survived. But she doesn't know whether she believes herself or not. _

Akamaru whimpers and noses at her hand, and it doesn't move.


End file.
